Pericardial adipose tissue (PAT) is an ectopic fat depot associated with measures of adiposity and metabolic risk factors and a predictor of coronary heart disease events (1– 5).
Blubber is typically viewed as a storage depot associated with lipid reserves, within which lipids, lipid classes, and fatty acid profiles have been characterized in physiologic and energetic studies of marine mammals (Iverson et al. 1997; Mellish et al. 1999).
VAT is associated with insulin resistance and widely regarded as the regional depot most associated with metabolic disturbances.
Several investigators, including us, have demonstrated that an increase in the size of visceral fat depot is associated with metabolic syndrome, inflammation, dyslipidemia, and coronary artery disease (17– 20).
In this paper we have demonstrated that visceral adipose depots are associated with reduction in Treg numbers.
Reductions in AT depots were associated with improvements in biomarkers.
Controlling for weight loss, reduction of specific AT depots was associated with improvement in metabolic biomarkers.
Fat deposition in arteries promotes atherogenesis (62), while fat accumulation in visceral depots is associated with coronary arterial disease (116).
Increased number of adipose tissue macrophages mainly in visceral depots is associated with adipocyte hypertrophy, insulin resistance, activation of stress-signaling pathways, increases in autophagy and apoptosis [ 18].
We next assessed whether the relative adipose tissue distribution, i.e., the percentage of fat in a certain abdominal (sub -depot, wasub -depoted wash clinicassociateders.
There is also the question of whether reductions in the size of specific AT depots are associated with improvements in biological indicators of metabolic health such as fasting glucose, insulin sensitivity, and serum lipids.
